XVI

Civilization

FIRST of all, I must know what you mean
when you speak of civilization. I can quite well
ask you this because you are an intelligent and
an educated man, and then because you are always
talking about this famous civilization.

Before the war I was an assistant in an industrial
laboratory. It was a good enough little place;
but I assure you, if I have the melancholy luck to
come out of this catastrophe alive, I shall never
enter it again. The open country! Some spot
where I shall never hear the whirring of your
aeroplanes or any of those machines of yours that
used to amuse me once, when I knew nothing about
anything, but that now fill me with horror,
because they are the very soul of this war, the
principle and reason of this war!

I hate the twentieth century, as I hate rotten
Europe and the whole world on which this wretched
Europe is spread out like a great spot of
axle-grease. I know how ridiculous it is to flash
out generalities like that; but, thunder! I don't
say these things to every one, and besides, you
might as well be ridiculous in one way as in
another! I tell you that I shall go to the
mountains and arrange it so that I shall be as
much alone as possible. I had thought of going to
live among the savages, among the black people,
but there aren't even any real black people now.
They all ride bicycles and want to be decorated.
I shall not go to live with the black people. We
have done all we could to lead them astray; I saw
that clearly enough at Soissons.

In the spring of this year I was at Soissons, with
all the G.B.C. I suspect G.B.C. doesn't mean much
to you; but that's another reason for quarreling
with you about this civilization: it rebuilt the
Tower of Babel, and soon men will have so debased
their native tongue that they will have made a
sort of telegraphic patois out of it, without
savor and without beauty.

The German retreat had carried the line over
toward Vauxaillon and Laffaux, and there a good
deal of fighting was going on. In one sector of
the battle-field such a position as that of the
mill of Laffaux was like a thorn at the bottom of
a wound: it kept up the inflammation. Toward the
beginning of May there was a great attack on this
mill, and almost the whole of my own group had to
go up into the line.

"As for you, Sergeant," the officer told
me, "you are to remain at the hospital and
take charge of the stretchers of the A. C. A.
We'll send you men."

I knew all the subtleties of military language by
this time. When I heard they were going to send
me men, I knew perfectly well I wasn't going to
get any one, and in actual fact I remained at the
head of four men who had been rejected; they were
a sort of cacochymic cretins for whom no one had
any use.

From Saturday on, the wounded began to arrive in
groups of one hundred. And I began to
pile them
up methodically in the wards of the A.C.A.

The truth is, the work didn't go well. My poor
diseased stretcher-bearers did not pair off well,
they stumbled like broken-kneed nags, and made the
wounded scream. They would fish men out haphazard
from the enormous pile waiting to be attended to,
and the whole A. C. A. shuffled its feet with
impatience, like a human flesh-factory that
doesn't receive its raw material and revolves on
itself, empty.

I must explain to you what an A. C. A. is. In the
slang of the war it's an "autochir,"
[Ambulance Chirurgicale Automobile] in other
words, the most perfect thing in the line of an
ambulance that has been invented. It's the last
word in science; it follows the armies with
motors, steam-engines, microscopes,
laboratories--the whole lock, stock, and barrel of
a modern hospital. It's the first great
repair-shop the wounded man encounters after he
leaves the workshop of trituration and destruction
that operates at the front. Those parts of the
military machine that are the worst destroyed are
brought there. Skilful
workmen fling themselves
upon them, unwrap them at full speed, and examine
them competently, for all the world as if with a
hydro-pneumatic machine, a collimator. If the
part is seriously out of order, they do what they
can to set it right; if the human material is not
absolutely worthless, they patch it up carefully,
so as to get it back into service at the first
opportunity. That is what they call "the
conservation of the effective."

As I have said, the A. C. A. was trembling like a
machine that is going but has no material to work
upon. My stretcher-bearers, with the clumsiness
of drunken porters, would bring it a few wounded
men, who were immediately digested and eliminated.
Then the factory would continue to rumble like a
Moloch whose appetite has merely been awakened by
the first fumes of the sacrifice.

I had picked up a stretcher myself. With the help
of an artilleryman who was wounded in the neck and
who asked nothing better than to make himself
useful until he was operated upon, I was steering
my litter across the throng. It was then
that I saw in passing an anxious, smiling face, its
forehead hidden under a casque, the face of a
general, a considerate general, and I heard the
words:

"Your stretcher-bearers aren't getting on
very well. I am going to send you eight Malagasy.
They are excellent porters."

Ten minutes later my Malagasy were there. To
speak more precisely, it was an assortment of
negroes in which the Malagasy element
predominated, a collection of samples chosen from
the 1st Colonial Corps, which at this very hour
was striking hard before Laffaux. There were a
few Sudanese, of uncertain age--dark, wrinkled,
hiding under their regimental jackets glowing
amulets that smelt of leather, sweat, and exotic
oils. As for the Malagasy, imagine men of medium
height and a timid air, who looked like black and
serious embryos.

All these men took up the litters and, at my
order, began to carry the wounded as silently and
phlegmatically as if they were unloading bales of
cotton on a dock.

I was satisfied; that is to say, reassured. The
A. C. A., satiated for once, was working with
full jaws, and had the hum of all well-cared-for
machines which drip with oil and all of whose
parts glitter.

Glitter! The word's not too strong. I was
blinded by it when I went into the
operating-barrack. Night had just fallen--one of
those warm nights of that beautiful, brutal
spring. The cannonade gave sudden leaps like a
giant in torment. The wards of the hospital were
crowded with a confused and surging mass of
suffering beings in which death was working to
restore order. I took a deep breath in the
darkness of the garden, and then, as I have said,
I made my way into the operating-room.

There were several compartments in it. The one in
which I suddenly found myself formed a boss on the
side of the building. It was as hot as a
smelting-furnace in there. Men were washing,
brushing, polishing with minute care a mass of
glittering instruments, while others were stirring
up the fires, which had the white heat of
soldering-lamps. Ceaselessly, men came in and
went out,
ceremoniously carrying boxes in their
outstretched hands, like head waiters devoted to
the stately rites of the table.

"It's warm in your quarters," I
murmured, to say something.

"Go over to the side, it will be better
there," said a little man, bearded like a
kobold.

I lifted a hanging, with the impression that I was
penetrating into the breast of a monster.
Opposite me, raised up like a monarch on a sort of
throne, which one reached by a number of steps, I
recognized the heart of this being. It was what
they call an autoclave, a sort of immense pot in
which one could cook with ease an entire calf. It
rested flat on its belly and flung out a jet of
vapor with a noise deafening and monotonous enough
to make one lose all sense of time and space.
Suddenly this infernal sound ceased, and it seemed
to me like the end of eternity. A lot of little
vessels on the back of the monster continued to
sputter and gurgle. A man like a helmsman was
turning a large wheel and the lid of the
sterilizer, suddenly unscrewed, turned over,
revealing a fiery
interior out of which came all
sorts of packages and cases.

The heat of the furnace was succeeded by a moist,
depressing warmth, like that of the sweating-room
of a Turkish bath.

"But where do they operate on the
wounded'?" I asked a boy who was washing
rubber gloves in a great copper basin.

"Over there in the operating-rooms; can't you
see! But don't go in from this side."

I plunged back into the night, as into an abyss of
coolness, and made my way toward the waiting-room
to find my stretcher-bearers again.

At this moment they were bringing in a lot of
cuirassiers. A division of dismounted cavalry had
been engaged since morning. The finest men in
France had been struck down by hundreds, and they
were waiting there like broken statues, whose very
fragments are beautiful. God! What strong,
magnificent creatures! They had such big chests,
such powerful limbs, that they couldn't believe in
death; and when they felt the rich, thick blood
flowing from their veins they swore with
oaths and
laughter at the breakdown of their torn flesh.

"When it's my turn," said one of them,
"they can do what they like with my carcass,
but as for putting me to sleep--by God! not
much!"

"Yes, whatever they like," said another,
"but no amputations! I need my paw, even if
it is all smashed up. I want that!"

These men were coming out of the radiograph room.
They were naked under their wraps, and were
wearing, pinned to their' bandages, a whole outfit
of many-colored tags, labels, formulas, like a
sort of algebraic commentary on their wounds and
the injuries of their internal organs.

They were talking about this first excursion into
the laboratory like well-trained children who
understand that the modern world cannot live or
die any longer without the meticulous discipline
of the sciences.

"What did he say, the X-ray major?"

"He said it was an anteroposterior axis. I
suspected as much myself."

"As for me, mine's in the stomach. He said
the abdomen, but I know it's in the stomach, all
right. The devil take it! But I don't want to be
put to sleep! I won't have that, if I know
myself!"

The door of the operating-room opened at this
moment and a flood of light deluged the
waiting-room. A voice called out:

"Next! And the stomach case first."

The black porters adjusted their shoulder-straps
and the two speakers were carried off. I followed
the stretchers.

Imagine a luminous rectangular block, set in the
night like a jewel in a lump of coal. The door
shut again, and I found myself imprisoned in the
brightness. On the ceiling an immaculate canvas
diffused the bright light from the lamps. The
springy floor was strewn with red cloths which the
orderlies were quickly picking up with pincers.
Between the floor and the ceiling were four
strange forms which were men. They were entirely
clothed in white. Their faces were completely
covered by masks which, like those of the
Touaregs, concealed everything but the eyes; they
were
holding their rubber-covered hands spread out
in the air, in the fashion of Chinese dancers, and
the sweat was streaming from their temples.

One could hear faintly the whirring of the motor
that generated all these lights. The autoclave,
once more gorged with food, filled the universe
with its strident wail. Little radiators snorted
like animals whose fur is stroked the wrong way.
All this made a barbaric and yet grandiose music,
and the men moving about there seemed to be
performing, harmoniously, some religious dance,
some grave and mysterious sort of ballet.

The stretchers wound their way among the tables
like canoes about an archipelago. The
instruments, arranged on white cloths, shone like
the windows of a goldsmith; and the little
Malagasy handled their burdens with care and
docility. They stopped when they were ordered and
waited. Their black, thin necks, encircled by the
yokes, their shriveled fingers about the handles
of the stretchers, made one think of sacred
monkeys, trained to carry idols. The two
cuirassiers,
immense, pale, stretched beyond the
litters both at the head and the foot.

There were a few ritualistic gestures and the
wounded men found themselves on the tables.

At this moment my glance met that of one of the
blacks and I had a sensation of sickness. It was
a calm, profound gaze like that of a child or a
young dog. The savage was turning his head gently
from right to left and looking at the
extraordinary beings and objects that surrounded
him. His dark pupils lingered lightly over all
the marvelous details of this workshop for
repairing the human machine. And these eyes,
which betrayed no thought, were none the less
disquieting. For one moment I was stupid enough
to think, "How astonished he must be!"
But this silly thought left me, and I no longer
felt anything but an insurmountable shame.

The four Malagasy went out. I felt somewhat
relieved. The wounded men seemed bewildered,
stupefied. The attendants hurried about them,
tying their hands, their legs, rubbing them with
alcohol. The masked men gave orders and moved
about the tables with the measured gestures of
officiating priests.

"Who is in charge in there?" I asked
some one, quite low.

He was pointed out to me. He was a man of medium
height, seated and holding his gloved hands in the
air while he dictated something to a secretary.

Fatigue, the noise of the cannonade, the dazzling
lights, the hum of industry about me, all
contributed to give me a sort of lucid
intoxication. I remained motionless, carried away
in a turmoil of thoughts. All these things that
surrounded me were made for a good purpose. It
was civilization's reply to itself, the correction
it was giving to its own destructive eruptions; it
took all this complexity to efface a little of the
immense harm engendered by the age of the
machines. I thought once more of the inexplicable
look of the savage, and the emotion I felt was
made up of pity, anger, and disgust.

The man whom they had pointed out as the chief had
finished dictating. He remained
motionless in his
heraldic position and seemed to be dreaming. I
noticed that behind his spectacles there burned a
beautiful grave look, mingled of serenity, ardor,
and sadness. One could see almost nothing of his
face, the mask concealed the mouth and the beard;
but the temples revealed a few newly gray locks
and a swollen vein on his forehead betrayed the
efforts of a strained will.

"The wounded man has gone off" some one
murmured.

The surgeon approached the table. The wounded man
was indeed unconscious, and I saw that it was the
same one who had declared so energetically that he
did not wish to be put to sleep. The poor man had
not even dared to stammer out his protest. Caught
in the mill-hopper, he had been immediately
mastered and had abandoned himself to the appetite
of the machine, like pig-iron swallowed up by the
rolling-mill. And besides, didn't he know that
all this was for his own good, since good has been
reduced to this pass?

"Sergeant," a voice said to me,
"you mustn't
stay in the operating-room
without a cap." Just as I was going out, I
looked at the surgeon once more. He was leaning
over his work with an earnestness in which, in
spite of habit, in spite of his costume, his
gloves and all that apparatus about him, one could
discern a certain tenderness. I thought with a
sudden vehemence: "No! No! That man is not
taken in by it!"

I found myself again in the waiting-room with its
smell of blood, like the lair of some wild animal.
A shaded lamp filled it with a dim light. Some
wounded men were groaning; others were talking in
low voices.

"Who's talking about tanks?" said one
of them. "I was wounded in a tank." A
short, respectful silence followed. The man, who
was buried under bandages, added: "Our
gasolene reservoir was split open, my legs were
broken, and my face is burned. I know what a tank
is, I do!"

He said this with a strange accent in which I
recognized that ancient tormentor of humanity,
pride.

I went off to smoke a pipe in the heart of the
darkness. The world seemed to me confused,
incoherent and unhappy; and in my opinion it
really is so.

Believe me, Monsieur, when I speak with pity of
civilization I know what I'm talking about; and
it's not the wireless telegraph that can make me
change my views. It's all the sadder, because
there's nothing one can do about it: you can't
climb back up a slope like that down which the
world is going to roll from now on. And yet!

Civilization! the true Civilization--I often
think of it. It is like a choir of harmonious
voices chanting a hymn in my heart, it is a marble
statue on a barren hill, it is a man saying,
"Love one another!" and "Return
good for evil!" But for nearly two thousand
years people have done nothing but repeat these
things over and over, and the princes and the
priests have far too many interests in the age as
it is to conceive other things like them.

Men are mistaken about goodness and happiness.
The most generous souls are mistaken also, for
solitude and silence are too often denied them.
I have taken a good look at the monstrous
autoclave on its throne. I tell you truly,
civilization is not in that object any more than
it is in the shining pincers that the surgeons
use. Civilization is not in all that terrible
pack of trumpery wares; and if it is not in the
heart of man, well! it's nowhere.